Presents Irelands Most Prolific Playwrite...  
Graham J. Reid
Life
Graham J. Reid was born in Belfast in 1945 of Protestant working-class parents. He left school at 15 and married at 20. He returned to full time education at the age of 26, and graduated at Queens University in Belfast 1976. He then became a history teacher in Gransha Boys High in Bangor, County Down, delighting its pupils with his wit and alternative sense of humour. He left in 1980 to concentrate his talents towards his writing. 

 His first play The Death of Humpty Dumpty (Abbey, 6 Sept. 1979), in which a schoolteacher who witnesses a sectarian killing is tracked and shot by paramilitaries, but survives in a physically and sexually humiliated condition, reeking emotional vengeance on his family until he is suffocated by his son David;

 The Closed Door (Peacock, 28 April 1980), set in a paramilitary shebeen; The Hidden Curriculum (1982) and Remembrance (1984) [var. 1985], dealing with working-class hardship;

 The Callers (1985); followed by Billy: Three Plays for Television ( (Too Late to Talk to Billy, 1982; A Matter of Choice for Billy, 1983; A Coming to Terms for Billy, 1984), for television, dealing with familial pressures amid violent social conflict; proved screen-vehicle for Kenneth Branagh as Billy; 

Samuel Beckett Award, 1984; Ties of Blood (1985), for television, deals with the army and its impact on civilians; 

appointed QUB Writer-in-Residence and Stranmillis College; 

You, Me and Marley (1992) dealing with the rejection of a Belfast teenager by the IRA when he tries to join in to avenge the killing of his brothers by the army and by loyalists; 

Blood of the Lamb [q.d.], filmed by BBC2 in Belfast, May 1996; 

Dying for a Mother, BBC radio play, 2001.

 

Works

  • The Death of Humpty Dumpty (Dublin: Writers’ Co-Op 1980); 
  • The Closed Door (Co-Op 1980); 
  • Plays incl. Too Late to Talk to Billy; Dorothy; The Hidden Curriculum (Co-Op 1982);
  •  Billy: Three Plays for Television (London: Faber & Faber 1984); 
  • Remembrance (Faber 1985); Ties of Blood (London: Faber & Faber 1986); 
  •  ‘Comings and Goings’, Threshold, No. 35 (Winter 1984/85), pp.21-25.

Writer - filmography 


(1990s) (1980s)

 
Precious Blood, The (1996) (TV) 
You, Me & Marley (1992) (screenplay) 


"Foreign Bodies" (1987/II) TV Series 
Hidden Curriculum, The (1984) (TV) 
Easter 2016 (1982) (TV) 
... aka Play for Tomorrow: Easter 2016 (1982) (TV) (UK: series title) 
Too Late to Talk to Billy (1982) (TV) 
... aka Play for Today: Too Late to Talk to Billy (1982) (TV) (UK: series title)